Around eight years ago, I had a dream about my teacher and then spiritual friend, Kyogen Carlson. In our relationship as disciple and teacher, we were very close. I lived and practiced in the Dharma House on Madison Street, then close by the new property on Siskiyou in Portland. I was a resident at Dharma Rain for close to eight years. One night I dreamt, I was to accompany him on a walk. He came to me in a dream asking for a time to meet. Later that evening we slowly walked a winding, gently ascending a wilderness path together toward the north. At some point I left, and he continued that journey alone. Not long after my teacher and spiritual friend died. I find it interesting that he asked me to accompany him and at the time of the dream no one, not even Kyogen knew that he was ill.
Of the dream-like imaginal character of the archetype, the coming to life of Jizo Bodhisattva, a friend to women, children, and travelers. There is a ritual celebration of Jizo Bodhisattva, in the forest garden at Great Vow for mothers of children who have died. Of the Greek God Dionysus, sensual, wild, emotive, ——- of the night, and the animal— also a friend to the feminine. He is not a literal presence, yet we are all guests in his household, all beings of thresholds, of the fragile and tenuous edge of new thresholds. He is a friend of the orient, pointing us due north, toward the realm of light. Prajnaparamita is a being of thresholds, she is the one who blesses the borderlands helping all beings to cross over—– gate, gate, paragate, parasamgate bodhi svaha.